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Out of Fashion: Green Lawns

Out of Fashion: Green Lawns

by

Laura Vanderkam

Diane Faulkner's lawn was always causing her trouble. This Jacksonville,
Fla., resident traveled frequently, and in her absence, her thirsty,
fussy grass would go brown or otherwise run afoul of her neighborhood
association's rules. She hated returning home to a $50 fine, but the
last straw was when her travels took her to rural Kenya.
Immersed in local life, she'd wake up at dawn with the villagers to
walk miles along a dried-up river toward a water source, then return
with a few gallons for cooking and washing.

"That was their whole morning," she says. As soon
as she got on the plane back to America, she had a thought: "How many
gallons of water do I waste on that stinking lawn?" And more broadly,
why did she even have a lawn in the first place?

It's a question a growing number of sweaty
Americans are asking as they push (or ride) their lawnmowers in the
August heat. While a field of green, closely cropped grass is the
default landscape for a "nice" neighborhood, there's no reason it has to
be. And there are plenty of reasons it shouldn't be - at least if we
value the planet and our time.

21 million acres

Historians aren't exactly sure why lawns became
as closely tied to the American dream as homeownership itself. Perhaps
early suburban sorts wished to mimic the look of British castle grounds
(minus the sheep that were responsible for the close cropping). The fad
spread, the lawn care industry grew, and now 21 million acres of the USA are covered with grasses that wouldn't grow well here if left to their own devices.

According to Stephen Kress of theNational Audubon Society, homeowners apply 78 million pounds of pesticides
a year to lawns,often to kill "weeds" such as dandelions and clover,
perhaps not noticing that these plants look just as green as grass when
you mow them.

Mowing itself requires fuel, just like our cars,
with a similar impact on the environment. And all these woes are before
you even get to the issue of water. According to Kress, maintaining
non-native plants requires 10,000 gallons of water per year per lawn,
over and above rainwater. That water doesn't just show up by itself; it
requires energy to get to your hose. In California, for example, the
energy required to treat and move water amounts to 19% of total electricity use in the state.

In short, lawns are incredibly inefficient, and
not just from an environmental perspective. Maintenance requires time
and money, which people usually claim are in short supply. According to
the Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey, the average
father of school-aged kids spends 1.6 hours a week on lawn and garden
care - more time than he spends on reading, talking, playing or doing
educational activities with his kids combined.

Shaming away a trend

For all these reasons, there's a growing backlash
against suburban seas of green. "The perfect lawn is in peril," reports
Steinberg. Big chunks of Canada have banned certain lawn pesticides. In
the U.S., municipalities such as Los Angeles and Raleigh, N.C.,
regulate how many times a week homeowners can turn on the sprinklers.

That said, while rationing water during droughts
has merit, I don't think policymakers should start regulating lawns
broadly. Deploying inspectors to count the square footage of grass vs.
wild plants is a waste of resources when states are cutting teachers and
cops. The best approach is for all of us to start thinking of lawns as a
fashion - a fashion like wearing the feathers of rare birds in hats was
once a fashion. Fashions can change when enough people decide they are
ridiculous or wasteful. Few parents would light a cigarette at a
playground anymore, even if it's not illegal, and we should start
treating the presence of a vast, green, cropped grass lawn in the middle
of summer the same way: as a weird and antisocial thing.

Certainly, there are options.

"You don't have to trade off the lawn for some
hideous alternative," notes Penny Lewis, executive director of the
Ecological Landscaping Association. First, ask "how much lawn do you
have and how much do you really need?"

Some homeowners keep a small patch of grass
around the house and turn parts of the lawn into a meadow that attracts
birds and butterflies. Others simply swear off pesticides and let the
grass go dormant in the summer.

Faulkner, on the other hand, went all-in. She
redid her lawn with rocks and hearty plants such as Confederate Jasmine,
arranged to look like an English garden. Because all her plants grow
well in Florida, they require no upkeep. "I don't have to mow, I don't
have to water, I don't have to trim," she reports. Her water bill has
gone from $80-$90/month to $20.

Her only lawn headache now? Figuring out what to
do with the time and money she's saving - a problem let's hope more
homeowners have soon.

Further

The debacles pile up, from large - Iran, Obamacare, immigration, Puerto Rico, women's rights - to small, like rhyming Tanzania with mania. So do the questions about fitness: moron, or mentally ill? Citing their "duty to warn" about the danger Trump poses, a group of mental health experts are hosting a dozen town halls Saturday to confront the issue of "presidential capacity," and what to do about it. Not a moment too soon.